Duane Cooper is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Morehouse College. His current research interests are in the mathematics of voting and representation, with particular interests in election procedures that allow for fair representation. In addition, he has experience and maintains interest in mathematics student and teacher development. He is principal investigator of projects funded by awards from the National Science Foundation and the National Security Agency.
Prof. Cooper has recently taught mathematics courses in Real Analysis, Number Theory, Combinatorics and Graph Theory, Calculus, and Precalculus. He has extensive experience teaching preservice and inservice school mathematics teachers. He taught Mathematics Methods for preservice elementary school teachers and for preservice secondary school teachers, as well as a graduate course on Trends in Mathematics Education. He developed and taught a series of mathematics courses for Baltimore City Public Schools elementary teachers. He organized similar mathematics experiences in a Saturday seminar series for elementary school teachers in the Prince George's County Public Schools as well as summer coursework for PGCPS middle school mathematics leaders.
Beyond work at his institution and in his department, Dr. Cooper has been active with various professional organizations. He served three years as a member of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics' Committee for a Comprehensive Mathematics Education of Every Child. He completed terms of service to the Mathematical Association of America's Committee on Consultants and their Committee on the Mathematical Education of Teachers. He is currently a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Mathematics Section Committee as a representative from the NCTM. He has also served on and now chairs the Benjamin Banneker Association's Educational Policies Committee. He served several years on the MATHFest Advisory Board of the National Association of Mathematicians (NAM), and he is now a member of NAM's Board of Directors. In addition to NCTM, NAM, AAAS, MAA, and Banneker, he is a member and regular presenter at meetings of the Public Choice Society.
Prof. Cooper was raised in Atlanta, Georgia, where he remained for college, receiving his B.S. in mathematics from Morehouse College and his M.S. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1983. He received the Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. It was during his graduate years that he found his calling in education, the result of a variety of experiences teaching elementary, high school, and college students. Thus, he sought and received a postdoctoral appointment in both the Center for Mathematics Education and the Department of Mathematics at the University of Maryland, where he served for several years on the faculty before returning to Morehouse in 2002.